20th Century Fox has just dropped the first trailer for Tim Burton’s latest down-the-rabbit-hole fantasy, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Adapted from Ransom Riggs’ 2011 novel of the same name, the film tells the story of a 16-year-old boy named Jacob Portman (Hugo’s Asa Butterfield) whose morbid curiosity is piqued after his grandfather is murdered by a magical creature. Following a mysterious blonde girl named Emma (Ella Purnell) down to a sunken ship, Jacob discovers a portal back in time to the 1940s, where a Charles Xavier-esque schoolmarm named Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) runs an orphanage for kids with magical powers. Our hero, naturally, turns out to be one of them.

The trailer is loaded with gorgeous art design, endearingly morbid characters — one girl gnashes her food through a mouth on the back of her neck — and the director’s signature love of outsiders. “Because our abilities don’t fit in the outside world,” Miss Peregrine tells Jacob, “we live in places like this, where no one can find us.” But it seems like something sinister is able to find them after all, and it’s up to Jacob to save the school.

Co-starring Judi Dench, Rupert Everett, and Samuel L. Jackson, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children hits theaters on September 30th.